"- wait, have you tried fighting a swarm?"

Yeah. She won't do it again but she didn't know it was dangerous at the time. She didn't get hurt or anything, though, it was fine.

"Okay. I'm glad you're all right. If you do get a hankering I can take you out on a patrol somewhere densely populated enough that the swarms won't be too old, I can handle them, but you're really a bit young to be getting into that."

She is a little curious whether they can touch her when she's phased out but she isn't that interested otherwise.

"Little ones, probably not. They start getting better at stuff when they're bigger."

That makes sense. She'll be careful of big ones; the ones she fought started right by her and she figured out what to do pretty quick.

"How'd you do it?"

Gummed them up with goo and then dropped cartoon rocks on them.

"Smart! Your cartoon power would actually be really good for first response if you wanted to go that way when you're older, you'd leave less of a mess than some people's swarm control spells."

Maybe.

She's never been interested in fighting but the swarms feel different, it's kind of weird actually.

"That's a thing that happens to magical girls. A few things change when God picks us out and we answer Her, and that's one of 'em. That and the thing where we're thaumosexual and don't think exotic body mods look weird."

Okay.

Thaum-what?

"Magical girls only want to kiss or get married to other magical girls, not boys or regular girls. You're just thirteen, you might not have noticed yet. And there's a girl in my squad who doesn't want to kiss anyone at all, and it's not because she has a beak, so there's that."

Huh. She'd never thought of wanting to kiss someone as something that might happen to her in the first place, but that's good to know.

"Mm-hm. If you activate young enough there's nothing there yet to change."

Yeah, that's better than it could be. Are there any other changes, or just those three?

"Supposedly we score high on something called 'openness to experience' and we're more polyamorous but I think that's probably cultural."

She doesn't know what that second thing is.

"Kissing multiple people instead of just one."

Kissing is confusing.

"Can't argue there! You don't need to worry about it yet for you. Just, if I'm off at sea for a week and Winona has somebody over and kisses her, that's OK and doesn't mean she's doing anything wrong, even if other people think so."

Okay, that's easy enough.

"Good," smiles Julie.

Is there anything else she should know?

"You know about girls in the mysteries? Cryptids?"